The old man whose acquaintance I once made in a pub, I who never talk to strangers, who am never spoken to. His lips moved as he sat on his own, a type I always ignore. The old man who became my drinking acquaintance during my heavy drinking days, in the days when I knew no one, spoke to no one, simply by virtue of us sitting in our customary seats some distance apart in the empty afternoons, who muttered soft banal words that I barely heard, and barely responded to, who was neither happy nor unhappy but just sat there day in day out, living out his time – a condition I aspired to in those days, which are not so far away, which in fact are always close behind me.

– Frenet, Journal